University of Texas at Dallas, School of Management

AIM7334: Research workshop, AIM, Summer 2006

Instructor: Ashiq Ali, SOM4.434, ashiq.ali@utdallas.edu, Extn: 6360

Teaching Assistant: Ali Coskun, axc047000@utdallas.edu, Extn: 4434

Class: Tuesday 1 to 5pm; Room: 2.112;

Objective

The objective of this course is to help students develop skills that are useful for producing
research papers. The final deliverable for the course is a working paper of publishable
quality.

Choice of research projects

First year students: If you have an interesting proposal from your previous Ph.D.
seminars, you may develop it further and carry out related empirical work. Alternatively,
refer to recent conference issues of top tier accounting journals and identify in your area
of interest a high quality paper that is accompanied by discussant comments suggesting
ways to significantly improve the paper. Replicate the main results of the paper and carry
out the extensions suggested by the discussant.

Second year students: The guideline is the same as for the first year students except that
the second year students are more likely to have a well developed research idea from
before and they may find it more fruitful to pursue this ideas further.

Third year and above students: These students should by now have decided on a
dissertation topic in consultation with a faculty advisor. They should work towards
developing their dissertation topic further and carry out related empirical analysis.
Alternatively, they may work on a paper unrelated to their dissertation

Class presentations

Each student will present their research paper. It should include a discussion of
background papers, research questions, hypotheses, research design (should build on an
existing paper), available results, and potential contribution. The paper should follow the
Accounting Review guideline. The conclusion section should list subsequent work
planned to be done.

It is the presenting students’ responsibility to e-mail to Ali Coskun (TA for the course) by
Friday of the previous week (i) the paper that he/she will present and (ii) the most closely
related published paper).
Other students should e-mail to Ali Coskun (before 10 am on the day of the class) at least
two insightful questions or comments related to the paper. Simple minded questions will
adversely affect your grade.

Submissions:

All students are required to turn in a 1 to 2 page proposal before May 23rd. The proposal
should have a brief discussion of your research topic, the current status of the project
(hypotheses, data collection, results, write up, submission to a journal etc.), and what you
plan to accomplish during the summer semester. On July 19th, all students are required
to turn in a 1 to 2 page progress report. This report should discuss the task that you
accomplished during the summer semester and a time line indicating your future plan
with regards to the project.